Faster Construction for Larger Ships

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I have made a change to the ship building code that means the rate of ship construction will change depending on the size of a ship. The basis of this is that while a supertanker costs maybe 1000x more than a fishing boat, it doesn't take 1000x as long to build. The larger shipyard needed for the supertanker can work on many more things at once than the small shipyard needed for the fishing boat. However, the reason the change in construction rate is based on ship size and not shipyard size is that it would hardly be efficient to build fishing boats in the shipyard intended for the supertanker.

In v3.1 the base rate of shipbuilding will apply to ships of size 100 (5000 tons). If a ship is a different size, the rate of shipbuilding will be:

Normal shipbuilding rate x (1+(((Class Size / 100) - 1)/2))

This is less complex than it looks. What it means is that the class size is divided by 100 to get a multiple of the base class size of 100. So a class of size 150 (7500 tons) would have a multiple of 1.5. This multiple is then reduced (or increased if less than 1) to half the distance between the multiple and 1. So for the size 150 ship, the final multiple would be 1.25.

So if the shipbuilding rate for a size 100 ship was 1000 BP per annum, the annual shipbuilding rate for a size 150 ship (7500 tons) would be 1250, for a 10,000 ton ship it would be 1500 and for a 15,000 ton ship it will be double (2000 BP per annum). A 25,000 ton ship will be built at triple the normal rate and Erik's 125,000 ton battleglobe will be built at 12.5x the normal rate. Bear in mind that these ships will still cost the same as before and require the same resources. The shipyard will just use up wealth and resources at a faster rate.

A 2000 ton ship will take longer than normal. It is 0.4x the size of a 5000 ton ship. Half the difference takes it to 0.7, so its annual construction rate will be 700 BP. A 1000 ton ship will be built at 600 BP per annum.

The rate at which each ship is being constructed is shown on the list of shipyard tasks and the estimated completion dates reflect the new build rates

This should enable large ships to be constructed in a reasonable time while still taking longer than small ships. It will also increase the construction time of gunboats a little, although not their cost. Of course it still requires you to be able to bulid the shipyards capable of constructing such monsters. I will be applying some similar changes to shipyard modifications so you can increase the size of large shipyards more quickly but I will add those details in a later post once I have made the changes.

Steve

[waresky]

awesome.
useful for become a "Imperial Shipbuilder" in ur game.

U know tonnage in Traveller:_)..10.000tons.r a merely "LightCruiser"class...
Stupid question:a "real" Dreadnought of 1.000.000 tons r possible in Aurora?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

awesome.
useful for become a "Imperial Shipbuilder" in ur game.

U know tonnage in Traveller:_)..10.000tons.r a merely "LightCruiser"class...
Stupid question:a "real" Dreadnought of 1.000.000 tons r possible in Aurora?

When I originally started with Aurora I hoped to have huge Battlestar Galactica type ships as well as small survey ships. The problem has been the shipyard construction rates. The SY rates were set at their current level because I wanted realistic construction times and I didn't want hordes of ships because they get difficult to manage. However, while that goal was achieved it also precluded really huge ships due to the time required to build one (and to build and retool the necessary shipyard). I think these changes will keep the construction times reasonable and keep down the number of ships while allowing you to build huge ships if you can afford them.

The million ton dreadnought is possible and would be built at 100x normal speed under the new rules. It might take a while to build the required shipyard though, although see my next post for why it won't be as long as it used to be. It might also take a while to gather the minerals. You'll probably have to strip mine an entire solar system

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

The same multipliers that are now applied to ship construction rates will also be applied to shipyard modification. So if you want to add extra capacity to a 10,000 ton shipyard, you can do it 50% faster than adding extra capacity to a 5000 ton shipyard. Adding extra capacity to a 15,000 ton shipyard can be done at twice the rate of a 5000 ton shipyard. This applies to adding capacity, adding slipways or retooling. This means that very large shipyards become possible as their rate of size increase will escalate. Modification costs remain the same, you can just make the modification more quickly. As different shipyards will be adding mods at different rates, I have added an extra column to the shipyard management grid showing the modification rate for each shipyard.

Note that this is different from the new shipyard operations tech, which reduces the overall cost. A combination of the two, reducing cost and increasing modification rates, will allow very large shipyard complexes to be built far more quickly that was previously possible.

Steve

[sloanjh]

Totally Cool, Steve.  Looks like I'll be able to build my "Ark" class generation ship now

Hmmmmm I wonder what the cost would be to have a space station with no engines and a whole lot of life support....

Thanks,
Joh

[Haegan2005]

Steve, I found that a good median ship size is roughly 6000 tons. Smaller then this and its a specialist shipand larger then this and it becomes a multi-takser. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

[Erik L]

Steve, I found that a good median ship size is roughly 6000 tons. Smaller then this and its a specialist shipand larger then this and it becomes a multi-takser. Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

6k tons is the point I shoot for in my starting tech games. It's a nice median size for just about anything. Escorts, offensive ships, scouts, and survey ships all have viable designs at this size. With the added bonus of an affordable jump ship design.

*edit*
And the base jump tech fits into this size a lot better than 5k tons.

[James Patten]

The million ton dreadnought is possible...It might also take a while to gather the minerals. You'll probably have to strip mine an entire solar system

Didn't Imperial Star Destroyers take similar resources to build?

[ShadoCat]

I tend to shoot for 6000 tons except for specialty ships like terraformers and jump gate construction.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I went for 5000 tons as the base size mainly because that is size 100 and therefore its relatively easy to visualize how long a ship will take to build or how much effect a shipyard size will have a modification time. I could change it to 6000 tons but that would then make large ships slower to build than if the base is 5000 tons.

Steve

[ShadoCat]

By all means, keep it at 5000.  I don't mind getting a bit if a speed boost for my ships.  <grin>

[Haegan2005]

point taken

I went for 5000 tons as the base size mainly because that is size 100 and therefore its relatively easy to visualize how long a ship will take to build or how much effect a shipyard size will have a modification time. I could change it to 6000 tons but that would then make large ships slower to build than if the base is 5000 tons.

Steve

[Michael Sandy]

Interesting.  If the time to build modifier is based on size, rather than cost, then I expect merchant ships to get quite big.

That way, you tie up fewer slips for a given volume of shipping.

But as tech gets bigger, ships get more expensive per ton, so warships won't get as big as fast.

The only thing increasing merchant ship cost per ton will be increased engine costs, but some earlier analysis I did suggests that as engine cost increases, the proportion of space on a merchant ship devoted to them will decrease.  So while early merchant ships may actually be faster than warships, as tech increases, efficient merchant ships will be slower, and only specialized merchant designs will be able to keep up with the fleet.

The size increase also makes a big argument for Jump Gate construction.

Consider:
A race wants to be able to shift truly large amounts of infrastructure and industry.  It can go with a design that takes 1 year to build, or one with 8-10 times the capacity in 4 years.  It would have to build really large maintenance facilities, but when considering the possibility of terraforming worlds with multi-megaton duranium deposits, large ships look to be a bit more efficient.

A downside is that by building very large slips a race can go through a stockpile VERY fast.  And a bad guess about what size is efficient would be very costly indeed.

And here is another plus:
If you are interested in avoiding the Total Warfare paradigm of Starfire, this makes it possible to build very large planetary monitors that CAN'T go on the offense, due to a lack of jump ships.  So wars become a matter of lesser ships duking it out on the frontiers, for limited stakes.

[Erik L]

Playing with this I've noticed that smaller ships do take a lot longer. Maybe have the calculation have a lower boundary. Any calculation that falls below that, gets raised to it.

I just find it very odd that it takes 13 months to do a repair on 1500 ton ship. (The repair in question is the geo scanners on a geosurvey ship)

[SteveAlt]

Playing with this I've noticed that smaller ships do take a lot longer. Maybe have the calculation have a lower boundary. Any calculation that falls below that, gets raised to it.

I just find it very odd that it takes 13 months to do a repair on 1500 ton ship. (The repair in question is the geo scanners on a geosurvey ship)

Tha does sound very strange. How big was the ship and what is your base shipbuilding rate?

Steve